I'm planning on recording a .hack//Infection run next week where the goal is to 1) finish the story as usual as well as 2) max out the Ryu Books (i.e. get a game '100%'). This would involve meeting all the potential party members for .hack//Infection, opening 300 chests, getting 15 Dungeon Clears, 10 Field Clears, and raising 3 types of grunty, among other things. I was wondering what you guys think of that as a potential category. Would people be interested in seeing a run of that kind? Should I tweak it before I go ahead and record it?

Sorry to double post, but just to be clear, cos I think I wasn't really that clear in the first post, the kind of run I'm suggesting is one where you fulfil all the Ryu Book bonus requirements (e.g. as listed here https://www.gamefaqs.com/ps2/551240-hack-infection-part-1/faqs/22282) apart from the ones to do with total amount of time played. Basically it'd be a 100% run, but 100% as measured by the in-game mechanic of Ryu Books. The timesaving would come from careful routing, and by combining the goal of finding grunty food with the goal of visiting areas, opening chests etc. Also, sorry if the forum is the wrong place to suggest something like this. I'm not new to .hack but I'm very new to speedrun.com

The only problem I'd have is calling it "100%" if you're measuring by Ryu Book completion and then leaving out Ryu Book 1 just because it requires 15 hours of play time. Though, I agree that leaving it out would make the run so much more interesting and fun to route.

The areas visited component of Ryu Book 1 would still be required, but you're right that leaving out the time-based bonuses would render it not truly 100%. Would labelling it something like Ryu Books 99% or even Ryu Books% be more satisfactory? Honestly I'd be happy for it to be called whatever you think would be best - I'm just glad you like the idea of it! ^w^

In fact, leaving out the 100% is definitely a good idea because obviously, completing the Ryu Books doesn't require completing the goblin tag events or, I believe, the second Gardenia quest. It also would not require the bonus dungeon - though it wouldn't rule it out, assuming that we didn't make it a rule to finish the Ryu Books before you defeat Skeith.

What it's called isn't too important as long as the goals are set. There's a lot to do in //infection.

Personally I'm a stickler for game defined stuff and will always argue against player defined categories.

I'm on the fence of a "Ryu Book %" run that does not require every condition to be met. It's disingenuous. On the other hand, I fully understand that the 15 hour time requirement is really dumb and would be a detriment to defining it as a "speedrun".

For what it's worth, since Ryu Book Requirements unlock CGs and Movies and BGM you could also define it by that. "N-1 Unlockables%"

Defining it by the bonus unlocks sounds like a good idea! On the 15 hour thing - I'd be happy to do a run like that, but as it stands now (and I've had to tweak the route a lot and am nowhere near being able to do a proper run yet as I'm realising there's a lot of optimisation I can do) it looks like such a run could easily be completed in under 10hrs, potentially under 5, and definitely in under 15. What I mean is, if we made it so people had to literally meet all the requirements, then the scoreboard would be a series of 15hr completion times. I mean it'd be interesting to see the bonuses attained efficiently anyway, but if there was room for improvement on the run time then I think that'd lead to more healthy competition and thus more creative ideas about how to do it as fast as possible. It'd only be a small deviation from the requirements of Ryu Book 1, and that'd be the only exception to 'unlock all the bonus stuff' that i'd suggest.

I'm really infrequent in checking this site, so apologies for getting back to you only just now. I just want to clarify myself a little bit - because I think we're on the same page here.

Like I said, I fully understand the the requirement being a bad one. My strongest opinion on the matter is that I don't want to call it "Ryu Book %" if one of the requirements isn't met.
Defining it by Unlocks is much more acceptable to me, it makes it much easier to point out "this one thing is dumb" without misleading people who read the category name.

Did anything ever come about with this?